Here is a small selection of poems from my first book, American Spirit, available for preorder now for $12 plus $1.50 s&h at:
http://finishinglinepress.com/NewReleasesandForthcomingTitles.htm
The book will ship on August 5, 2011.

Hungry Again in Camelot

--at Camelot Pizza and Golf

I press my fingers to the steelwool and feel the cold, elasticcheese snapping back into the blackolive sludge of sausage and saucecaking the sink and my fingers.Each scrape echoes the seconds lostto the stacking of steel pans that will need washing again before the tables are wiped clean and the trashis as empty as my stomach.While I wash, I’m lost to staringat the dried cheese by-products stuck to the time-clock on the wall I charged interest for Mauricio’s liesof five-fifty-five an hour and dreamsof management and dishwater blondes,lost to scraping cheese from tables abandoned by customers for the eternalbells and buzzers of pinball and DonkeyKong and the killing of aliens and time lost with the tokens slipping like moonsover a sea of teenage insecurity.Under a pepperoni moon, midnight found us sleepless, slapping time clocks and golf balls onto freeways until the cops sent us sprawlinghome like hell to yelling preachers on late-night TV, foretelling our eventual descent. But what the hell did they know of our lonely lot, reaching nightly into the ovens’ flamesfor pizza we would never taste,for girls we’d never kiss,for Friday nights that slipped awaywith every strand of plastic cheese devoured by the garbage disposal’s gaping mouth letting loose a mighty belch as if to eulogize the wasted lives already ours.